Morning Coffee: Now with 100% more bat!

Many times I like to grind my coffee and fill the coffee maker with water before we go to bed at night, and just turn it on first thing in the morning.

I probably will not be doing that any more.

The reason I won't be doing that is because I just read this story in the Chicago Tribune. It seems a woman in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, prepared her coffee the night before just like I used to. She enjoyed her coffee and went about her business. That night, when she cleaned out her coffee pot, she found a dead bat in the filter. Officials were unable to determine if the bat had rabies because its brain was too thoroughly cooked by the scalding coffee water.

To me, the most surprising thing about this story is that it didn't happen to MizBubs' sister. She lives in Iowa, and has quite the history with bats.

Porch bat

Looks like my theory about the shoe bat was probably correct. That was, one of our dogs probably carried it into the house and lost it some time before MizBubs noticed it.

I got home from work tonight, ending a long week. Within minutes of arriving home I was greeted by the sound of my youngest daughter shrieking at the dogs. A badly injured little brown bat was out on the back porch, apparently just having been chewed on by Duffy. My daughter was upset. I found out that the town we live in does not have an animal control officer. I also realized that the course of action I would have taken if alone--quickly severing the bat's head with a shovel and putting it in the garbage--was definitely not the thing to do under my daughter's bat-mourning gaze.

So that's how I came to be standing on my driveway at 9:30 at night, duct-taping a garbage bag to the exhaust pipe of my car, euthanizing a bat. I hope the neighbors saw this. And to really top off the whole effect, I wore a headlamp.

I have to go to sleep now. In the morning I have to take bat remains, on ice, to an animal hospital to be tested.

Shoe Bat

"Oh God, I'm so goth, I've got bats in my boots."
--My eldest daughter, the mad seamstress

As MizBubs watched TV the other night, one of the compound mutts (Duffy) went goofy and started sniffing, barking and running around a pair of our daughter's shoes on the living room floor. This went on for a few moments, and then Duffy assumed the alert watchdog position and stared at the shoes.

A few minutes later, MizBubs noticed some movement near the shoes. A mouse? A dog toy that Duffy dragged from under the sofa? Nope.

A bat. A live bat, subsequently identified as Myotis lucifugus, a Little Brown Bat. Injured, which is a good thing because it kept him from flying around the house, bumping into things, tangling in everyone's hair while biting them and giving everyone rabies. Instead, he crawled along on the floor while Duffy went apeshit.

MizBubs, girl dynamo, called in our youngest daughter to witness the unbelievable cuteness of the little bat. They agreed he was adorable, but not to be touched since he was, after all, injured wildlife. No Steve Irwins here. Miz Bubs then put on some cement-mixing gloves, got a shovel, scooped up the little rabies carrier, and flung him into the neighbor's yard, out of the reach of our dogs. She then returned to her regularly scheduled broadcast.

How did a bat get into my house? We couldn't see any obvious way in, so right now I'm going with the theory that one of the dogs brought him in, and unsure of what to do with him and inexperienced in bat-killing, lost control of the bat. It's a weak theory, though, and I'm open to other suggestions.